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‘I was on my legs.’
‘That’s not a proof that you were awake.’ (There was again
laughter in the court.) ‘Could you have answered at that
moment, if anyone had asked you a question — for instance,
what year it is?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And what year is it, Anno Domini, do you know?’
Grigory stood with a perplexed face, looking straight at
his tormentor. Strange to say, it appeared he really did not
know what year it was.
‘But perhaps you can tell me how many fingers you have
on your hands?’
‘I am a servant,’ Grigory said suddenly, in a loud and dis-
tinct voice. ‘If my betters think fit to make game of me, it is
my duty to suffer it.’
Fetyukovitch was a little taken aback, and the President
intervened, reminding him that he must ask more relevant
questions. Fetyukovitch bowed with dignity and said that
he had no more questions to ask of the witness. The public
and the jury, of course, were left with a grain of doubt in
their minds as to the evidence of a man who might, while
undergoing a certain cure, have seen ‘the gates of heaven,’
and who did not even know what year he was living in. But
before Grigory left the box another episode occurred. The
President, turning to the prisoner, asked him whether he
had any comment to make on the evidence of the last wit-
ness.
‘Except about the door, all he has said is true,’ cried Mitya,
in a loud voice. ‘For combing the lice off me, I thank him;

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